1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a mobile advertising system for providing a differentiated, customized Mobile Advertising (hereinafter MobAd) service to a user, and more particularly to a system and a method for providing a user-customized mobile advertising service using a piece of event information.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Open Mobile Alliance (hereinafter OMA) is a standards body which develops standards for the interaction of separate mobile solutions. The OMA serves to mainly prescribe various application standards for such services as mobile games and Internet services. In particular, Open Mobile Alliance Requirement Working Group (OMA REQ) and Open Mobile Alliance Content Delivery Working Group (OMA CD) among OMA working groups are developing a technology standard for a MobAd service.
The mobile advertising service refers to a technology that transmits music, graphic, voice or text-based customized advertisements through a wireless terminal such as a cellular phone or a Personal Data Assistant (PDA), to a mobile terminal user. At present, there are several solutions supporting such mobile advertising services; however, compatibility and popularity of these solutions is lacking because the respective companies and providers use their own software. In order to solve this problem, the OMA is in the course of establishing the related technologies as a MobAd standard.
There are three main characteristics of a mobile advertising service. First, it can configure an information database for a user and realize a differentiated, personalized advertisement. That is, since a user always carries a mobile terminal, any selected advertisement can be transmitted to that user terminal in a period determined by a provider or according to a user's request, and advertisements through such a mobile terminal are always exposed to the user. Second, a mobile advertisement service can have an interactive characteristic. Specifically, because the mobile advertisement service can provide information on an advertisement that a user desires beforehand and can also provide a telephone number or a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), a user can actively access the service and obtain more detailed information on products. Third, a mobile advertisement service can measure metrics of a user. This is, a mobile terminal can receive a response of a user who is exposed to advertisements, since it is involved in interactive media. This metrics enables analysis of a user's preference and can be used for marketing purposes.
Hereinafter, specific examples of the prior art technologies and the present invention will be described based on OMA REQuest/Content Distribution (REQ/CD) MobAd (Mobile Advertising)]. However, it is appreciated that the present invention is not limited to such description.
A conventional mobile advertisement system can provide a customized advertising service based on preference or context information related to user profile information, but it does not consider a customized advertisement service based on a corresponding event information which a user created dynamically and also directly.
As such, because the prior art mobile advertising system does not provide a user with an opportunity to select an event, the received advertisement may be a partial customized advertisement or can be handled as spam. Moreover, bandwidth consumption occurs due to an advertisement transfer that the user does not desire. Thus, if one mobile advertising system provides a mobile advertisement reflecting event information and preference information dynamically set by a user, it is possible to present a more differentiated mobile advertisement service.
Consequently, there exists a necessity in the art for providing a differentiated method and apparatus for transmitting/receiving preset event information and event-related advertisement service to/from a user or a recipient designated by the user, according to event information (for example, anniversaries, birthdays, and meetings) and preference information set by a user.